Tuesday, May 17, 2011

keeping the list

Finish graduate schoolContinue working full timeGraduate graduate schoolKeep my sanityKeep my sanityNo more emotional breakdownsFinish counseling hours while working full timeMeet Aaron LeikerGet Aaron Leiker to kiss meMarry Aaron LeikerMove? to where in the HELL?!Quit my jobLeave the town I've been living and active within for the past 9 yearsLeave the state******************************************************************************

The above list is a compilation of the tasks that I'll be completing here soon. Almost too soon. I talked and planned me graduating from Graduate School since I started the program in August 2007. It's one of those things, that you talk about all the time and then when it gets here, it scares the living shit out of you. But you have to play the role that you're totally prepared for it. You were made for this and you could not be happier. It was all part of your plan, after all. You can't get pissed off at the plan that you made, right? That's insane. And that would be a sign of weakness and no way can anyone show signs of weakness or honesty.

I am scared shitless.

I have planned for this, yes. It was all part of my plan (graduating from Grad. School, at least). The Aaron Leiker part presented itself out of my estimated plan little over a year ago. And that's still throwing me off. There is a security, though, in staying in school. You have the excuse that you can't move on (out of Manhattan), because you are finishing school. I have a big handful of students who, I believe, are scared shitless of leaving Manhattan (Kansas State Univ.). So, they'll add majors and minors to their curriculum or make up excuses why they do not want to leave the university. They'll blame someone: crappy advising (how dare you!) or shitty professors. However, when it's all whittled down: they're scared to leave the security of a "plan".

And I am just as guilty as the next.

The idea of leaving Manhattan is incredibly exhilarating for me: to leave the idiot PT and GE county drivers, the radical driving of military men in their huge trucks cutting in and out of traffic as if this is Philly, the ditzy Johnson County sorority girls with their Daddys money over priced SUVs for their skinny asses, and the horribly overpriced cost of living. Then, it's overwhelming depressing. I took a dear friend to the airport today, for he's researching in Italy for the next 3 months.

It was the first of many good byes for me. It is becoming that time in Aaron and I's lives that we must move on and follow a bigger dream for us and leave the rest behind. We can still cling to those memories and the people we've met and loved and cared for. And we still will.

However, as the seasons change and time moves on through the upcoming days, months, and years, our new chapter will take full effect. I will be a Colorado resident and the only state my kids will know will be Colorado. They will not be able to look at a Kansas licence plate and rattle off the county it is from. They won't know that SG is Sedgwick or RN is Reno. They will not tell their friends that their Mom is from Halstead; they'll say "She's from Kansas", as if I am from a foreign country, instead of the state 4 miles down the highway.

It is a new chapter, a new licence plate, a new drivers licence with a new last name, a new title "M.S: Masters of Science), and a new day.

Followers

About Me

I am the oldest of four girls and a boy to a Kansas dirt farmer from Harvey County, Kansas. My strong faith is closely followed by my family when I think of the most important "things" in my life. I grew up only being able to watch "Little House on the Prairie" on Fridays at 5 on PBS. That is it. Seriously. Not joking. My family still doesn't eat meat on Fridays; yeah, we're those Catholics. The kind that you always felt sorry for, because we went to church everyday of Holy Week. The kind that dressed up for church on Sundays. I lived. And now all those little things that I swore I'd never do when I was older, I'm doing.